Department of Chemistry, University of North Florida, Jacksonville FL, USA

Abstract

Chemical patterning at the nanometer scale is used for applications including biosensor arrays and nano/molecular electronics. One chemical patterning technique, the molecular ruler process, combines conventional lithography with the sequential deposition of mercaptoalkonoic acid molecules and copper ions on to noble metal surfaces. This chemical multilayer is used to define nanometer scale spacings which can be tailored via the number of iterations of the metal-ligated layers. However, the effectiveness and reproducibility of the process is limited by the quality of metal-ligated multilayers. Further, the assembly of the metal-ligated multilayers is a resource intensive process, requiring numerous dipping and rinsing steps to complete. Therefore, we have developed an Arduino-based 3-D printed robot dipper to minimize the amount of bench time required to assemble multilayers and to produce consistent multilayers. We will discuss the engineering of the robot dipper, compare the quality of multilayers assembled by hand to those assembled utilizing the robot dipper, and illustrate our ability to fabricate high quality nanogaps.